Nature of the Machine
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Tied for first place in the 2005 Daydreams Awards, best HeloBoomer fic.


**Nature of the Machine**

_Timeline placement: end of season one, after Kobol's Last Gleaming_

_Rating: PG_

_Disclaimer: The Battlestar Galactica universe, and all that is in it, is not mine, but rather belongs to Glen Larson (in spirit), Ronald D. Moore, the Sci Fi Channel, NBC/Universal, SkyOne and everyone else who put up the brainpower or the cash to make it happen. This is a work of fiction based in that universe. No copyright infringement is intended. No money was made off this beast – please don't sue._

_And a big thank you to my betas: More Light, Lee in Limbo, sarahbell05, and banthafodder_

Helo watched Sharon as she sat by the fire, legs curved around to the side, her bandaged arm set free from the sling. She massaged her left hand with her right. She. It. The Cylon that had taken the place of the woman he had fallen in love with. What bothered him the most was that he had no idea when she had been replaced. Was it when she came back for him, weeks ago, rescuing him from that blonde and her Cylon followers? Or had it been later, when she had been taken herself, beaten and left where he would find her, the bait in a trap?

He sat on a fallen log, the remains of a tree long dead, fiddling with a twig. "I can't trust you." He threw the words at her like stones, examining her face beyond the flames. He thought she flinched at the word "trust," but couldn't be sure – it could as easily have been a trick of the firelight, turning her skin a warm gold. He forced the memories of how that skin felt, tasted, into a dark corner of his mind, locking them behind steel doors.

"I know," she answered quietly. "But that doesn't change how I feel." She didn't look at him, instead paying attention to the pattern she traced in the dirt.

"How you _feel_?" Unexpectedly, the word angered him. He surged to his feet and flung to the ground the stick he had been weaving back and forth between his fingers. He wanted to hurt her, make her feel some of the pain he was feeling, even as he denied that she could feel anything at all. "You're a frakking _machine_!"

She definitely flinched at "machine." She raised her beautiful, liquid dark eyes to spear him with her gaze. "Helo, I. Am not. A machine. Can a machine feel pain?" She struck her left shoulder with a balled fist, the blow bringing tears to her eyes. At least, he thought it was the physical pain of the blow – it had to be, for his own peace of mind. "Can a machine care for someone? Can a machine…" She looked away from him again, into the fire, went back to doodling in the dirt. "Can a machine get pregnant?" she whispered.

"Shut up." He took a step toward her, threw more angry words at her, and she flinched again. "Just shut up! I don't want to hear anymore lies or…or half-truths."

That made her look at him again, her eyes flashing with her own anger. "You don't want to hear me because you know I'm as alive as you are."

"You're a Cylon."

"Yes. Yes, I _am_ a Cylon." She stopped doodling, picked up a rock the size of an egg. Helo wondered if she was going to throw it at him and a small part of him said it would serve him right if she did. Instead, she merely played with it, slanting a look at him through the fire, which popped and crackled merrily in counterpoint to their heated words. "But in a way, I'm as human as you are."

"What, deep down inside, where it counts?" he mocked. "That's a laugh. You're…" He struggled for the right words. "You're just a bunch of circuitry and…and….and programming!"

She closed her fingers around the rock, which splintered in her hand. "Look at my shoulder, Helo. Does this look like wires? Circuitry?" Again, she struck her shoulder and he saw a new stain on the dirty sling, fresh blood glittering in the flickering firelight. Whether it was from the new cuts on her hand or from the older gunshot wound, he couldn't tell. "And how is my so-called _programming_ any different from you learning how to be a…a _good man_ from your parents?"

His face felt hot as he replied, "It just is." _Gods, does that sound as childish to her as it does to me?_

"Oh, that's a good argument."

Her sarcasm stung. "It's different because my parents never trained me for genocide!"

The two of them were so intent on their bitter war of words that they didn't notice when Starbuck returned to the campsite, coming up the rise from the stream below camp.

"Hey, kids, am I interrupting?" she asked, her tone a little too innocent as she ran her fingers through her wet hair, flinging droplets of water toward Helo, who stood between her and the fire.

"No," Helo replied, looking back over at Sharon. He suspected Starbuck had heard most of their argument.

"Yes," Sharon responded, her eyes locked on Helo.

Nothing more was said for several minutes as Starbuck pulled a cigar from her jacket pocket, bit off the end, spit it out toward the fire, stuck the end of a dry twig into the flames. Lighting up, she puffed a ring of smoke at Helo. The fire settled, sending a shower of sparks into the air.

Relegating Starbuck to the background, Helo returned his attention to Sharon. "Why are you here?" he asked.

Sharon had been staring into the fire and jumped, startled. "What?"

"Why are you here? Why haven't you gone back to your masters?" He kept the fire between himself and Sharon as he crouched down. The movement pulled the muscles in his thighs, the left giving him a twinge of discomfort. The gash had mostly healed, but the damaged skin and muscles still occasionally protested.

Starbuck strolled over to the seat Helo had previously vacated and straddled the log, tossing her jacket in front of her, cigar locked firmly between her teeth.

Sharon shook her head. A few strands of her hair had come loose from the tail she always wore – Helo's fingers itched to smooth it back from her face. He squashed the impulse and forced the memories of her hair sliding like water through his fingers, tickling his bare chest, into the same vault he had earlier locked his memories of her skin.

"You just don't get it, do you?" Her voice was disgusted.

He poked his tongue into his cheek, wishing Starbuck had found a pack of suckers in Delphi's ruins instead of smokes. "For whatever reason, they wanted me to get you pregnant. They got what they wanted." Flames leapt into the air as the campfire settled again.

Starbuck caught his attention as she leaned back. Feet firmly planted on the ground, she lay flat along the log and pulled the makeshift pillow Helo had earlier abandoned under her head and shoulders. She rolled her face toward the fire, both Helo and Sharon in her sight.

"So, Boomer," she began, causing two sets of eyes to focus on her. "If a troop of toasters were to come across us right now, what would happen to you?" Her tone conveyed nothing more than idle curiosity, but the look in her brown eyes indicated a much stronger emotion that Helo couldn't interpret.

"The same thing that would happen to you." Sharon turned her head toward Starbuck. "If they still have a use for me, I get to live. If they don't," back toward Helo, "I die."

Starbuck shot a look at Sharon, lingering on her midriff. She smirked. "Something tells me they'll have a use for you."

Sharon laid a palm against her flat abdomen for just a second and said wryly, "Well, yeah, for the next few months, they probably will."

Helo couldn't pull his gaze away from what looked like a new smear of blood on Sharon's tanks, where her hand had briefly rested. As if from a great distance, he heard himself ask her again, "So, why are you still here?"

"Because her programming failed," Starbuck answered instead, studying Sharon's face.

"What?" Helo looked sharply at Starbuck.

"What?" Sharon looked as though she had been caught doing something wrong. She seemed to fold in on herself, somehow diminished.

"Because her programming failed," Starbuck repeated. Still lying flat along the log, she took a puff at her cigar before continuing. "They didn't factor in emotion."

Helo chewed at his cheek and looked at Starbuck, wondering what the frak was going through her head, what had happened to her in the weeks he'd been trapped on Caprica that could make her sound so…sympathetic toward a Cylon? "Toasters don't have emotions."

"Gods, are all men so dense?" Starbuck sat up and took another puff, rolling her eyes to the heavens. "That must've been some fun time, frakking a construct of metal and plastic…"

"Shut up," he shot at her, a little boy being picked on. He stood up, suddenly needing to _do_ something. He walked over to their cache of firewood and grabbed up a couple of pieces.

"Are you defending me?" Sharon shifted her position, crossed her legs at the ankles, arms wrapped around her knees. The once white sling, still empty, had slipped to hang down her back. She laid her cheek on her knees and watched Starbuck.

Starbuck studied Sharon while she thought about her answer. "Maybe…" she finally replied.

Helo placed a piece of wood into the flames and watched it for a few seconds. When it caught and began to burn, he laid the second piece over it, crosswise. Starbuck hadn't continued with whatever she was going to say.

"Why? Why would you defend me?" Sharon prodded, sounding as though this wasn't the Starbuck she was used to, and he wondered whether or not this particular model had ever met her before Delphi.

"Because I've seen how interacting with humans can change _toasters_ like you." She shrugged.

"Wait a minute." Both women looked over at Helo. If Starbuck had seen humans interacting with one of these… things, then that meant— "There are bio-Cylons in the fleet?"

Starbuck snorted and gestured with her cigar at Sharon. "Well, yeah."

"You think Sharon… You think the Boomer who returned to Galactica is a Cylon?"

She shrugged again and took another pull on her smoke. "It makes a lot of things that have happened make sense."

"But how? How could she be a Cylon? That would mean that there have been Cylons in the colonies for—" Helo suddenly felt sick.

"For years." Sharon had remained silent during the short exchange, but now she lifted her head from her knees, finished his sentence. She looked up at him. "There have been Cylons in the colonies for years."

He just stared at her, not knowing what to say. For months he had been her ECO, helping her get through the hazing of the other pilots, occasionally defending her when they called her a "rook," teaching her things about flying and Raptors that you couldn't learn from books or simulators. Months standing by, trying not to interfere as she became involved with the Chief, wishing she would look at him the way she looked at Tyrol.

"I tried to tell you, Helo." Tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to drown him. "God help me. I tried to tell you a lot of things, but you just wouldn't listen."

Helo held himself very still, afraid if he moved, he might shatter. "I'm listening now."

"Are you?"

Gods, everything this woman had ever said or done was a lie… "Just say whatever it is you want to say." Wasn't it?

"At the end of the first Cylon War—"

He cut her off. "The _first_ Cylon War?"

"I guess that makes this the second Cylon War, huh?" Starbuck shifted, swung her left leg over the log, and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. She blew another ring toward the fire, where it merged with the smoke that drifted lazily from the blue and orange flames.

"At the end of the first Cylon War," Sharon began again, "the Cylons took prisoners. Not many. Just a few people from each of the twelve colonies." Her tone was neutral and she kept looking back and forth, from Helo to the fire. "They'd already begun developing their plans for what's happening now."

"They?" Helo asked.

"They. We." She swallowed hard before continuing in an almost-whisper. "I don't know where I belong in this anymore."

"Go on," Starbuck encouraged, her voice surprisingly gentle.

Sharon nodded, took a deep breath. "They cloned those prisoners," she exhaled. "Once the clones passed puberty…" She paused again, and then looked at Helo. Her eyes remained locked on his, daring him to say something, as she said, "Once a clone passed puberty, a chip was placed in his or her brain that would control things like endorphins, adrenalin, heart rate."

"I guess that explains why you never seem to get tired…" His mind was so busy processing this new information that he forgot to say anything sarcastic.

"Not all of the test subjects survived. Or were deemed suitable." She broke off and stared into the fire. "They ended up with twelve successful models; one for each colony…"

"We've seen four of them," Starbuck mentioned when nothing more was forthcoming.

"Four?" Sharon looked up at her.

"You," Helo said, nodding his head toward Sharon, "and that blonde bitch." Then he shot a look over to Starbuck. "What else?" He still couldn't accept them as "who."

"Leoben Conoy and Aaron Doral."

"Doral?" He felt his eyebrows rise about as far as they could go. "The public relations guy on Galactica?"

"Yeah," Starbuck confirmed. "After he was taken down the first time, frakker showed up again with a bomb. Leoben was seen at a munitions dump on Ragnor Anchorage, and then another copy was found on the Geminon Traveler. Other than Boomer, he's the only one I've had any meaningful conversation with."

"Gods." Helo scrubbed both hands through his hair, struck by the errant thought that he needed a haircut. "Does the Old Man know about Boomer?"

"No, at least, he didn't when I left."

"So what do we do? They need to know."

Starbuck looked over at Sharon. "What d'we do?" she repeated, looking back at Helo. What did she see? The friend who, for years, she'd regularly fleeced at Pyramid, or the fool who had allowed himself to be duped by the enemy? "We go back to Galactica."

"All three of us?" Sharon asked. Under the circumstances, he thought that idea might not appeal to her.

For that matter, he found that it didn't appeal to him. "They'll kill her," he said.

"What do you care?" Sharon's question sounded petulant.

Helo suddenly felt tired. Frak that. He felt exhausted, maybe even a little envious of all the humans who'd been killed at the start of this…second Cylon War.

"They won't kill her," Starbuck told Helo. She shot another look at Sharon, cocking her head, the famous Starbuck smirk again on her face. "You know what the other models look like, don't you?"

"I…" Sharon stopped, snapping her mouth shut with an audible click of teeth, biting off whatever answer she might have been about to give Starbuck.

"Well, don't you?" Starbuck challenged her, sitting up straight, cigar held between her thumb and forefinger. "Why don't you answer, Boomer?"

"Enough." Helo stood, brushed dirt from his uniform. "No more talk. It's late. You two get some sleep. I'll take watch."

Starbuck narrowed her eyes, staring at him. "Now _you're_ defending her?"

He glanced at Sharon; she seemed to have tuned out any further conversation, concentrating on the leaping flames, humming. He walked toward where Starbuck sat. "No, I'm not defending her, Starbuck, I've just had enough for tonight." He had a lot of thinking to do.

Helo was grateful when Starbuck, after a couple of tense seconds, merely gestured with her cigar, indicating that he should continue. He reached for the bundle of cloth and leather that had served both him and Starbuck as a pillow. He shook it out and shrugged his arms into the sleeves of his jacket.

The fleet had to be warned about Boomer, and Starbuck was right – to tell the others about Boomer, they had to go back to Galactica. But Helo wasn't so sure that they'd let Sharon— Dammit! He wasn't so sure they'd let this Cylon that sat beside the fire, watching him, humming some unfamiliar tune, live even if she did give them the other bio-Cylon models. And he didn't want to think about how his superiors might go about getting that information from her – it, when they got back to the fleet.

He walked away from the fire, away from Sharon Valerii's sweet, seductive voice.

_Dear Gods, what do I do?_


End file.
